It is hard to tell the truth in such a way that your hearer actually understands what you want him to understand. On the other hand, it is fairly easy to tell the truth in such a way that your hearer understands something other than what you actually say. Politicians are particularly good at this, especially the fictitious Sir Humphrey from Yes, (Prime) Minister. 
Here are some ways folks avoid telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth and pretty much get away with it.
- Lack of precision, sloppy reporting, vagueness. “I’ll be gone for quite a while, so don’t wait up” really means “I’m planning on staying out all night but I don’t want you to know that.
- Exaggeration. “Everyone—absolutely everyone I’ve talked to is will be going.” Trouble is, I only talked to two people.
- Technical truth. A famous example is Bill Clinton saying: “I did not have sex with that woman!” Due to the sophomoric and narrow definition of sex Clinton was using, he was technically telling the truth.
- Partial truth, also called cherry picking. “I’ll be a Suzie’s. Here’s her mom’s phone number” is only partially true because I plan to go to a party at Joe’s before going to Suzie’s house.
- True, but misleading. The statement is true, but the implied information is not. Depending on the speaker’s motive, we either accept or reject this type of speech. Some examples
- “I’ll see you all Friday at the ballgame.” True, I do plan to see my friends at the ballgame on Friday. But, misleading because I also plan to see them all before Friday at the Thursday surprise party one of them is organizing for her spouse.
- “I have three blogs.” That statement is true but is misleading because I actually have four blogs.
- “There’s a man down on his motorcycle over by the Travis Building. Please come!” While there really was a man down on his motorcycle, it was a staged event—staged to get our doctor out of his clinic and over to another building for a surprise 50th birthday party for him.
- You ask me, “How did you get my address?” and I answer “Haven’t you heard of the internet?” implying I easily found it online when really I got his address from a mailing label.
- “I sent a letter to my first wife.” She is his first wife, but is also his only wife.
- Speaking ambiguously. “If you leave me, someone will be sorry.” Is that a threat to the person leaving? Is it a confession of affection? I can say one thing and intentionally expect the person not to really know what I meant.
- Sidestep/evasion. You ask “How did you get my address?” and I answer “Who said I have your address?” Or, “I’m not even going to lower myself to answer such a stupid question” because I don’t want to admit something.
- Spin. Spin is to speech as makeup is to a corpse. It can include several of the above tactics being used at one time to avoid telling a negative truth by obscuring it with positive half-truths.
- Backtracking. “Yes, that is what I said, but what I really meant was …”
Tune in next week for
Part III–Telling the truth–or not
I’m really liking this series. Upon reading those lists, I find that I do those things more often than I like (that’s being vague right there to not have to admit exactly how much I think I do it). I’ll really need to work on it more, starting now.
That was a lie.
Starting NOW!
Kind of like when, as kids, my brother would tell my sister that she was his favorite sister, though he only had one.
I’m really liking this series too. It’s giving me lots of great new ideas. Till now, my best method of avoiding telling the truth was to pre-empt any possibility of a dangerous topic by questioning someone on a different topic.
Speaking of motives, what could be the blog code’s motive for saying that the last comment was 37 years, 6 months ago? (hover the cursor over any post title under “Recent Comments”)
I was wondering that very thing. 37 years ago, I wasn’t alive then.